Thinking about Github / should probably go on my tech weblog / Wait. Tech weblog?

[hirez]

A stupid and annoying phrase that is surely destined for a Powerpoint presentation fell into my head the other week, and it went along the lines of 'Things like Github mean you have a whole pile of shit-hot hackers working for you for free'.

Assuming of course that your corporate interface to the thing like Github has enough clue to make use of the free things thus presented. Magpie and Cargo-cult are pretty much optimal anti-patterns there.

The other obvious thing is that leaving all your useful code there saves having to re-invent wheels should you have to up sticks and ply your trade elsewhere. I guess keeping that in mind also makes one aware of the need to avoid localisms.

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Once again, I have very little idea what you're talking about. But from my experience of trying to set up a professional discussion website, you tend to end up with a few empty vessels making a lot of noise, and everyone else being put off because either a) they don't want to end up in a stupid argument with said empty vessels, even though they know they're talking utter shite, or b) they think the empty vessels might know more than they do and therefore don't want to speak up in case they look stupid.

(Seriously, we ran a survey where we asked 'What would make you contribute more?' and a huge number of responses were 'if other people did'. Bunch of fucking sheep.)

[hirez.livejournal.com]

In the interests of clarity, I shall provide a worked example. (Obviously you're right, mind.)

Here's the public thing I have on github: https://github.com/hirez

It pretty much performs as advertised, which is to simulate traffic over a given wedge of network in order to stop the firewalls dropping the connection. That's the sort of thing that would happen if the given network traffic was based on the actions of users. Come half-six it's all gone quiet, the f/w goes 'bollocks to this' and drops the session.

If your code assumes that the connection will always be there, this can lead to Interesting Consequences.

(This is what happened to us. There's provision in the relevant protocol to support heartbeat packets which, among other things, keep the connection up. However, at the time of writing yon code, it didn't work. Also, it was an awful lot simpler just to bash out some Ruby, rather than do battle with the firewalls.)

That there code could be useful for other people in the same position, so I put it on Github.

However, it would not be useful if you had a problem that looked somewhat similar, because you'd end up installing the thing and having nothing change (or having something different happen). Then you'd have two problems. Your original bug, and the extra layer of fun introduced by using someone else's code that you didn't understand.

(Equally obviously, since it's Github and you've the source, you can hack on the thing so that it'll work in your environment, then send the changes back to the original author so they can incorporate them.)

[quercus.livejournal.com]

There's a good book / open sourced website out there called WikiPatterns
http://www.wikipatterns.com/display/wikipatterns/Wikipatterns

Loads of useful stuff about wetware wrangling, adoption fostering and much of it applies equally well between content wikis and discussion boards.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

That's a top thing. Although scoring a full house in anti-patterns bingo was too easy.

[reddragdiva]

This is why Reddit seeded with massive sockpuppetry to get the appearance of discussions going.